2 drive letters for same DVD drive

I have 2 different drive letters showing up for the same & only DVD drive in my system. Big question is why and how do I get rid of the 2nd drive

I did use Administrative tools\disk management to change the drive letter of my DVD drive & then this started showing up.

I have tried assigning the drive letter back to what it originally was and that didn't help either. One thing I have just narrowed down though. When the system boot up and I look at things with Windows Explorer evreything looks normal. Only 1 dvd drive is listed in my folder tree just as you would expect. I can put a DVD/CD in the drive & look at it's content. So far, So good, no extra drive showing up yet. Now as soon as I right click on that drive, lets say look to at it's properies, Bingo!!! Up pops the other drive letter. You can't actually use that "new" drive either. Even with media in the drive if you try to use it by clicking on it, it tells you to insert a disk even though there's a disk in the drive.

I have tried using Device manager to unisnstall, & reboot with with the same prevailing behavior.

I have tried powering off my machine, disconected the cables from the DVD drive, powered back up, powered back down, reconnected the cables & powered back up to let Win 7 rediscover the hardware to no avail. Win Explorer still report a 2nd drive letter as soon as I right click on the drive.

I'm running under Win 7 64bit with the latest Dopus 64bit installed

See the attached screen shot for further clarification.

Anybody got any ideas??

Thanks & have a great day!!
Jim

I'm not certain how to get rid of it, but when in Disk Management, did you compare the location info for each drive on the General tab of Properties. That might confirmed whether in fact that both are the same drive. You might also get a clue going through the option in the dropdown menu on the Details tab. The only time that I have had anything like this happen to me before, was when I had installed a virtual drive.

Just do a system restore to before it occurred - system restore continually adds system restore points so find one before you changed the drive letter - better still as this may not work, go into disk management and rescan (under actions) your drives - also if you right click on the area where it says cdrom 0 or 1 see what options are available - you might be better off trying to delete the new named drive if you cant get rid of the old named one. As Seikermaster said you might find something in disk management.

Another solution that you might work is to use the repair utility on the W7 dvd rom if the dvd drive will still work.

A lesson to be learnt - you should always use backup - its really good in W7 - and then you can restore your system - maybe system restore will work - its worth a try before using the W7 repair utility, if easier methods fail.

Something else I just thought of is to scan your system files - you might be able to find a replacement on the W7 dvd :
start -> cmd (run as admin) SFC /scannow
that checks to see if you have any corrupt system files

I want to thank all of you for your time & input about this problem. I have resolved it now. I have an Iso burn program installed called PowerIso. In it's options there is an option about mounting x# of virtual drives and it was set to 1. I disabled the option entirely & the problem went away. I don't exactly understand what virtual drives are for or how to use them or what the advantages are but diabiling the option worked.

If anyone cares to take the time to explain "Virtual Drive" to me I'm all ears & always wanting to learn.

Thanks again & have a great day!!!

Jim

Thanks. I read the Wikipedia article. That helped